Santa brought Laura a new mobile, the Nokia “Tube” (ExpressMusic 5800) model. One can be of various minds about touch-screens itself (it is very hard to touch-type sms messages with those, to start with), but the phone itself appears pretty ok. Its strengths and weaknesses are both related to the Series 60 (5th Edition) OS/UI it inherits from other Nokia smart phones. It is flexible and perhaps even logical to a certain degree, and you can freely use whatever operator you prefer, and add Symbian/S60 software to your heart’s content. On the other hand, the OS is only partially customized for touch-UI use: you are required to open menus and select additional commands, rather than just picking from touch-optimized icons or lists. So: it is so-and-so, but still nice to see more competition arriving to the field iPhone has dominated this far.
Category: technology
anything technology related, not fitting into other categories
Reading Excession
There has been a curious gap in my reading of the Culture series by Iain M. Banks so far, but this Christmas I did put some of my free time (night times, actually) aside to finally read Excession (1996). This is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking science fiction novel, written about a process where the different factions inside the Special Circumstances (the shadowy super-organisation dealing with external and internal security in the anarchist utopia called the Culture) need to deal with both the potential confrontation of a highly more evolved culture, coming outside of this universe, and at the same time deal with the ethical and moral issues embodied in the Affront, a race whose identity is based on inequality, slavery and systematic sadism. Is it allowed to go to war agaist the Affront to stop their evil, or is evil in the eye of the beholder? There is much good old fashioned interstellar intrigue, space fighting and megamachines marching to the stage, but also an attempt to deal with issues like gender, identity and free will. The novel is perhaps not at its strongest on the human characters, but the real protagonists are the Minds, godly powerful Articifial Intelligences, and the heady entertainment Excession is capable of offering is dealing with the interesting problems very highly powered beings and societies will possibly have to face at some point of their evolution. Allegorical readings of the Culture novels are also possible (interpreting the scienti-fictional framework as a dramatisation of certain ideologies), but not particularly inviting. These books are just so good head-trips.
diNovo Mini with Mac Mini
Bluetooth technology is still flaky and connections tend to break up, pairings get lost, etc. I decided to move the Logitech diNovo Edge keyboard to the downstairs ‘media cellar’, primarily due to size issues. The replacement is another diNovo, but the Mini version this time. Both of these keyboards actually run pretty well with Mac Mini, even if they are not formally supported. diNovo Mini did provoke a “keyboard not recognized” dialog, and Mac wanted me to press the key next to right from the left shift (which did nothing). But canceling that, you get a very nice, super-small bluetooth keyboard for the living-room use. The ‘ClickPad’ mouse replacement doubles as a four-directional cursor key, but the most important feature is that the entire pad is a button, so that you can pretty much use the system with one hand, guiding the mouse with your thumb and pressing it achieves mouse clicks with the same finger. Very nice! On the other hand, downstairs, I had much more trouble to get diNovo Edge to keep up its connection with the Vista OS over the bluetooth link.
Nokia Email with Gmail
Nokia released their Symbian-optimised email service, and I wanted to have a look and test-run it in my N95 8GB. The user interface is pretty nice and software integrated well with my Gmail account. But I think they have some issues with this version yet, though. The constant ‘bling’ noise of new email arriving soon got irritating and I could not find any way to switch it off. Then I decided to turn off the application, and it promised to close itself — but the ‘bling-bling’ still continued! I tried restarting the phone. No help: ‘bling!’ It had restarted itself automatically and started to download email again. Stop, please! I tweaked the settings: set the account, all folders to ‘no synchronization’, the software start to ‘manual’. No help: ‘bling, bling, bling!’ Finally I managed to uninstall the damn thing and finally: silence. Nice try Nokia, but: I’d actually prefer to stay in control of my email downloads, from now on. Link: http://email.nokia.com/ (Image courtesy of GISuser.com.)
Lenovo T500 could not complete the installation
Finally, late in the evening, I was able to press the power button of my brand new ThinkPad T500 for the first time. First I was greeted by the Vista error menu: Windows was not closed properly … do you want to safe start / start normally etc. That did not look too good. I pressed “Start Windows normally”. Disk clicking. Then an ominous error bling. Then the dialog window (pictured). Could not complete the installation? I thought this was supposed to have a preinstalled OS, straight from the Lenovo factory? I attempted restart. I tried pressing the blue ThinkVantage button. I tried pressing F8. F11. Always the same sequence: I can get either to the bios setup, or start-up the broken Vista, and be faced with the “Install Windows” message. Not even the Rescue and Recovery workspace, so that I could restore the factory default settings of the OS. Damn. Looks like this is not my lucky Friday.
Testing new workhorse: ThinkPad T500
This is not the most ultra-light, or most powerful option, but hopefully T500 will be the reliable compromise.
Nokia Social Media Communications in Africa
This night, I was enjoying a virtual trip to Africa (not the tourist park, but the real slums of Nairobi, where people live), courtesy of Nokia, who have set their Social Media Communications team to explore the social life in Sub-Saharan Africa. Jussi Impiö here explains the music project (more from the NRC YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/NokiaConversations):
Nokia Maps 3.0 Beta, but not for N95
I have found the mobile location and navigation utilities genuinely useful in several occasions lately, and have been following with interest the release of new, 3.0 version of Nokia Maps. The possibility to have certain landmark buildings as 3D objects in the maps sounds something that should make it more intuitive to place yourself in the real environment. Also, the synchronisation of favorites between a PC version (Maps in OVI service) and the mobile handset one makes it much easier to plan your routes beforehand on the proper PC keyboard, and then utilise those points of interest later, on the road. I was disappointed, however, to find out that currently Maps 3.0 is only available to the very limited number of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 devices, and e.g. my N95 8GB model is not supported (it belongs to the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 category). But they at least promise a quick release with more supported devices, lets see how fast that will be. More: http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps
Streaming media into PS3
I have made various attempts to get media streaming in our house from a server in cellar to clients set up in various other rooms. So far the only system that has really worked well has been the Squeezebox (Logitech, previously Slimdevices). They have dedicated server software that runs very well in a Linux server and integrates perfectly with the well designed player, both over Wi-Fi as well as Ethernet. Otherwise, no luck. Now, after investing to a Sony PlayStation 3, I got dedicated enough to try and solve the media streaming issues to really use this high-powered gaming console as a network-enabled home media center. It turned out that it was finally impossible to get PS3 to connect to anything without investing to more hardware: our home network has been build gradually, connecting piece to piece, and universal plug-and-play and other necessary media discovery protocols did not work if PS3 was connected wirelessly into a separate Wi-Fi router, and that was connected to another ADSL-modem-router (plus external switch) combo that I had piled up in our network cabinet. After getting rid of the old ADSL-modem and Wi-Fi box, and instead getting a combined Wi-Fi-modem-router device (Telewell TW-EA514, pictured), the problems appear to be solved. Now PS3 can at least see the Vista machine downstairs having a Windows Media Player 11, and connect to media shared through it. Several steps were, nevertheless, yet required before anything else beside music files could be seen through the media player. I am still unsure whether the settings in Control Panel/Network and Sharing Center/Media Sharing, or the paths added into the Media Player Library, or paths in the Windows Media Center finally did it, but now I seem to be able to access all my media also through the PS3. (Oops, while writing this, Vista crashed, lets see whether anything at all works after this…) Only thing I can say is that the era of effortless, transparent home networking and media device interoperability is not yet here.
PS3 unboxing
Our full hd television finally got a partner that can play Blu-ray movies as we got our PS3. It was a bundle deal, with Little Big Planet thrown in. Tweaking the video inputs took some time, and finally changing the HDMI cable to a better quality one changed the situation: there was a twitter and flashing in the 1080p screen mode before the cable was changed. Curious, but it looks that the gold plating is not recommended for nothing in PS3 HDMI cable connectors. After this, the quality of full hd movies was real eye-opener (the quality of digital tv signal in Finland is particularly bad, so the point of comparison was good for Blu-ray, to start with). It will take some time to experiment with the gaming capabilities of the new system more, but one thing is obvious already: the system is technically superior to anything out there, but the Sony “XrossMediaBar” user interface is a missed opportunity. I do not know the exact background of this particular choice, but it feels like a system designed by a group of nerdie engineers and cool graphic designers. No usability experts required. Pity. Great engineering, though.
frans goes blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.